So I don’t do much “streaming”. I’m old school; if I like a show then I’ll buy it (or get it as a present) on physical media… BluRay or 4K these days.
This meant I hadn’t seen much of New Trek. A few years back I got Picard Season 1 on BluRay, then season 2. But this year I’ve received/bought a lot of the new stuff, and I thought I might write down my thoughts and opinions. I’m going to do this in (mostly) the order I watched them in.
Note that everything is my opinion. I’m not the God of Trek; I’m not even part of fandom. I’m just a fan (if you don’t grok the difference, don’t worry).
Picard
Season 1 was not Star Trek. It was generic SciFi with a cut’n’paste Trek overlay. It wasn’t bad SciFi, it just wasn’t Trek. It could have been so much more.
Season 2 was worse. Oh let’s explore Picard’s past and hidden trauma. WTF? Where did any of this come from. This was terrible.
Season 3… ah, now we’re talking. Yes, it leaned very heavily on TNG to hit its emotional points. But it worked. The flashback scenes worked well, the character interactions worked… it worked. The attack vector… OK, Trek has never been the most consistent; I’ll give that a pass. Not the worst technobabble the show has ever produced! And a lovely callback to TOS. You can (mostly) watch Season 3 without 1 and 2, and enjoy it.
Actually, yeah; skip seasons 1 and 2; watch 3.
Short Treks
I got this on a whim. And I’m glad I did. These are short stories (it’s in the name) but they’re very very well done. Some of them are preludes to later series, but they’re not necessary pre-watching.
There’s some good fun stuff here. And some stories with a big emotional impact. Great story telling. Recommended.
Prodigy
So I caught an episode of this on Nickelodeon and thought “wait, what?” and programmed my TiVo to catch all of them.
This is a kids animated show. But it’s Trek. It’s GOOD Trek. So 11 episodes.. where is episode 12? (time passes). C’mon, where’s the rest? (google google) Oh, it’s only on Paramount+. Oh, and they deleted it, so you can’t even see it there? Oh yay, it’s on BluRay… Christmas present!
And, yes, the second half of the season is just as good as the first.
Why the hell Paramount decided to cancel (and delete) the show boggles my mind; this was excellent story telling. Grump.
Strange New Worlds
I watched the first episode and realised it came after Discovery so I quickly ordered that and put this on the back-burner…
Discovery
I wasn’t sure what to think of this going in. I’d just had the call-back from SNW. OK, it’s pre-TOS which is always something to be careful of (because of breaking the very fragile continuity there is). And it kinda worked; yeah yeah the control panels are far advanced of what TOS had, but that’s just a “visualization”; it does the same thing, it works the same, it’s just a touch panel rather than physical crap.
And the magic drive system… yeah, how they gonna not break continuity there? Let’s leave that aside…
Season 1 is good Trek. It fills in a part of the time line that doesn’t really contradict anything. It’s well done. And they even have a rationale for why this magic drive doesn’t show up else where. Heh.
Season 2 is even better. This is a great show and a great story line. It starts with a puzzle and we follow the clues and encounter contradictions and problems and you think you know what’s going on (I’d guessed who the Red Angel was) we get a reversal that kills that guess… this is a great season. And the call-back to “The Cage” from TOS is excellent.
And then Season 3… it’s the consequence of season 2… and I didn’t feel it. I can see what they’re trying to do; I can understand the story. But it just doesn’t work for me. Far too much “post apocalyptic” type of story for me, and it wasn’t well told.
(I haven’t watched season 4 yet; that’s on my wish list)
Strange New Worlds (for real this time)
OK, now we’ve done Discovery the scenario makes more sense. Why Pike is who he is (his back story) is told in Discovery season 2.
But I’m afraid this isn’t a good show.
Well, it’s good Trek. It’s very good Trek. As a prelude to TOS (Pike was the captain before Kirk) it’s good. As an episodic TV show it’s good.
But that’s the problem; “episodic”. Every other New Trek (except Short Treks) has been a season-long story arc. Strange New Worlds is very much a throw back. It’s the same reason I consider voyager to be the worst of the original Trek era.
(To be totally open; I still have 4 episodes of Season 2 to go, but I’m not expecting things to change based on the previous episodes)
Every episode of SNW is excellent. But there’s no direction. When TOS was created episode TV was the norm; in the 2020s we expect more. And SNW doesn’t give that “more”.
SNW could have been a perfect bridge between Enterprise and TOS; Discovery had already set the pattern. But no real story arc? Disappointing.
Conclusion
I’m the sort of person who if they like a show then they’ll want it on physical media. If I did have Paramount+ then I’d still have bought most of this.
None of the New Trek is bad.
If I was to make a recommendation, I’d skip Picard seasons 1 and 2. Strange New Worlds is missable, but it’s no worse than a lot of shows. Prodigy and Short Treks are unexpected fun.
I haven’t seen Lower Decks (yet!) so I can’t comment on that.